What is SQL Server Surface Area Configuration?
SQL Server Surface area reduction is a security measure that involves stopping or disabling unused components.
Surface area reduction helps to improve security by providing fewer avenues for potential attacks on a system.
For new installations of SQL Server 2005, some features, services, and connections are disabled or stopped to
reduce the SQL Server surface area. For upgraded installations, all features, services, and connections remain
in their pre-upgrade state.
SQL Server Surface Area Configuration allows you to enable, disable, start, or stop the features, services,
and remote connectivity of your SQL Server 2005 installations. You can use SQL Server Surface Area Configuration
on local and remote servers.
SQL Server Surface Area Configuration uses Window Management Instrumentation (WMI) to view and change server settings.
WMI provides a unified way for interfacing with the API calls that manage registry operations that configure SQL Server.
When to use SQL Server Surface Area Configuration?
After installing SQL Server 2005 or upgrading to SQL Server 2005, you should run SQL Server Surface Area Configuration
to verify which features and services are enabled and running, and to verify which types of connections SQL Server 2005
will accept. After initial configuration, you can use SQL Server Surface Area Configuration to verify or change the state
of features, services, and connections.
Using the SQL Server Surface Area Configuration
SQL Server Surface Area Configuration provides the following two tools:
- Surface Area Configuration for Services and Connections - for enabling or disabling Windows services
and remote connectivity.
- Surface Area Configuration for Features - for enabling and disabling features of the Database Engine,
Analysis Services, and Reporting Services.
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